I like these charity ideas, especially the ‘Exploratory altruism’ one.
I don’t know if you’ve seen this but Nuno Sempere and Ozzie Gooen mention here that they may look to evaluate existing cause area ideas to determine if they should be researched further. Seems closely linked to the ‘Exploratory altruism’ idea.
Indeed I have seen that post. I would be keen for more than one group to research this sort of area. I can also imagine different groups coming at it from different epistemic and value perspectives. I expect this research could be more than a full-time job for 5+ people.
Thanks for the link, it’s definitely relevant. We’ll be compiling a comprehensive list of resources that the org could use to start their research, and posts like this will be part of that resource list.
Just to clarify, I agree that the post as a whole is definitely relevant, but I also think this part is too:
We —Ozzie Gooen of the Quantified Uncertainty Research Institute and I— might later be interested in expanding this work and eventually using it for forecasting —e.g., predicting whether each candidate would still seem promising after much more rigorous research. At the same time, we feel like this list itself can be useful already.
See the comments for more of an explanation as to what this might entail (I asked).
This seems like the sort of analysis that an ‘Exploratory Altruism’ charity would do, so it may be worth contacting Ozzie/Nuno to discuss avoiding potential duplication of effort, or to enquire about collaborating with them. It’s possible the latter approach is preferable as they certainly have some highly interesting methodological ideas about how to assess the cause areas (for example see here and here).
Hi Nuno, sounded adversarial, that was not my intention.
What I meant to say is we will be speaking with who the other people and organisations working in this space are, and see if there’s a good chance that another actor would start a similar charity or do similar work. This may make starting an additional charity in this space less impactful for the whole movement if those resources were used elsewhere.
I like these charity ideas, especially the ‘Exploratory altruism’ one.
I don’t know if you’ve seen this but Nuno Sempere and Ozzie Gooen mention here that they may look to evaluate existing cause area ideas to determine if they should be researched further. Seems closely linked to the ‘Exploratory altruism’ idea.
Indeed I have seen that post. I would be keen for more than one group to research this sort of area. I can also imagine different groups coming at it from different epistemic and value perspectives. I expect this research could be more than a full-time job for 5+ people.
Thanks for the link, it’s definitely relevant. We’ll be compiling a comprehensive list of resources that the org could use to start their research, and posts like this will be part of that resource list.
OK, that’s great, thanks.
Just to clarify, I agree that the post as a whole is definitely relevant, but I also think this part is too:
See the comments for more of an explanation as to what this might entail (I asked).
This seems like the sort of analysis that an ‘Exploratory Altruism’ charity would do, so it may be worth contacting Ozzie/Nuno to discuss avoiding potential duplication of effort, or to enquire about collaborating with them. It’s possible the latter approach is preferable as they certainly have some highly interesting methodological ideas about how to assess the cause areas (for example see here and here).
Thanks for that extra context and further resources! We will be doing research on counterfactual replaceability.
Well, it’s not like we’re each adversarially trying to maximize our own counterfactual impact, rather than impact as community :P
Hi Nuno, sounded adversarial, that was not my intention.
What I meant to say is we will be speaking with who the other people and organisations working in this space are, and see if there’s a good chance that another actor would start a similar charity or do similar work. This may make starting an additional charity in this space less impactful for the whole movement if those resources were used elsewhere.
What is this supposed to link to?
Whoops I have fixed it now